Covestro hands Coatings & Adhesives to its former CMO, Andrea Maier-Richter

Covestro's new head of Coatings & Adhesives built the company's marketing function from scratch. Dr Andrea Maier-Richter has been appointed Executive Vice President and Head of the business unit, European Coatings reported on 6 November, with the change effective from 1 October.

She takes over from Thomas Römer, who moves across to become Executive Vice President and Head of Performance Materials.

Get Chem Data Digest every TuesdayThree-minute read. Free. One-click unsubscribe.

Who she is

Maier-Richter started at Bayer in 1999 as a chemical engineer in its Central Technology department and held senior regional and global roles at Bayer AG and Bayer MaterialScience until 2015. After Covestro's IPO that year she ran the polyurethane business in Asia-Pacific from Hong Kong.

In 2019 she set up Covestro's central marketing function and became its first Chief Marketing Officer. From July 2021 she led the Thermoplastic Polyurethanes business unit globally. She holds a doctorate from the University of Duisburg-Essen and has held leadership roles across Asia, North America and Europe.

According to the report, her brief is to build on the unit's existing strengths and to pursue growth through innovation and partnerships.

Meanwhile in Meppen

Covestro also opened a new polyester resin production line at its Meppen site in Germany, reported on 6 November. The multi-year, multi-million-euro project adds a reactor line with capacity in the double-digit kilotonne range, making polyester grades, alkyds and acrylic resins for can, coil, industrial coatings and adhesives under brands including Uralac, Uradil, Hybrane and NeoRez.

Covestro bought the plant in 2021 as part of DSM's Resins & Functional Materials business. The site employs more than 100 people and is hiring for production, filling and dispatch roles.

Why it matters for R&D software

Coatings and adhesives is about as formulation-intensive as chemicals gets. Thousands of resin, additive and pigment combinations, tuned for each customer, with a long tail of test data behind every grade. A business unit head with a commercial and marketing background tends to push for faster customer-facing development: quicker sample turnaround, more tailored grades, better use of application data.

That's a good fit for formulation management, experiment tracking and materials AI tools. We'd expect conversations at Covestro's Coatings & Adhesives unit to be framed around speed to customer rather than lab efficiency alone. Vendors whose case studies show shorter development cycles for resin or adhesive customers will have a natural opening.

What it means for hiring

In our view, new business unit leaders with commercial backgrounds often bring in new product, marketing and application development hires. Watch for openings in technical marketing and customer-facing R&D.
Vendors selling into coatings and adhesives will want account leads who understand resin chemistry and can speak to both R&D and commercial leadership.
Capacity expansions like Meppen create demand for application lab and technical service staff, a useful talent pool for informatics vendors hiring customer success people with real plant and lab experience.

Share Ask Anna about this →